The "color story" is a method of leading painting with small children, which allows them to explore the colors as archetypes, rather than jumping straight to painting forms (such as flowers, trees, people, etc). By developing a relationship with each color, and how it combines with others, it builds technique, and provides a basis for later, more complicated paintings. The children learn how to control the flow of water and color on their page.
All of these paintings are done with a technique referred to as "wet on wet", which means that the paper is soaked before painting with watercolors. This allows the colors to flow organically and smoothly on the page. It is very tricky at first to not just get a big puddle, but with practice, you can have quite a bit of control over how saturated the colors become, and how they blend together. Even the first graders can get some beautifully subtle and complex color gradients and blends, as you'll see.
This method of painting is also largely based off of Goethe's color theory. He looked at the individual character and gesture of each color, and how that gesture is expressed in nature. For example, yellow "likes" to be saturated in the center, and lighter toward the outside, which is an outward, expanding gesture. This can be seen in sunflowers, daisies, and countless other yellow flowers. On the other hand, Blue, likes to be darker toward the edges, and light in the middle. This creates an "inward" gesture. This can be seen in blue flowers, which are often small and tucked away. Red is a combination of these two, floating out, and then back in. This can be seen in the rhythmic layers of a rose.
What follows is a series of color stories that I've done with the First Grade class at Pine Hill Waldorf School, during my internship. We're working on getting our colors to be bold, and also to "whisper" and "tiptoe". We are beginning to work directly with how much water is on our brush, and how to use the rag effectively.
Each primary color has a character (Gentle Blue, Curious Red, and Joyous Yellow), which I've kept consistent from week to week. These characters do things and interact. These stories relate to how the paint goes on the page, and allow me to use verbs like "tiptoe". This helps the children to visualize the painting in a richer way. The stories are also somewhat pedagogical (socially therapeutic) for what I see going on in the social dynamics of the class.
